Gunstar Heroes Review

Gunstar Heroes was an ole Sega Genesis game released back in 1993. Released in 2006 for the Wii’s Virtual Console, the game has now made its way onto the Playstation 3 & Xbox 360 as the first in a slue of game downloads known as the Sega Vintage Collection. The Playstation 3 & xbox 360 version has some improvements over the original & wii release, so how does the game hold up?

On a pure gameplay standpoint pretty well. Gunstar Heroes is a side scrolling shooter where players control one of two twins, Red & Blue. As playing one of the twins you have access to four weapons to defeat an evil empire. While I would normally go into the story, like most old school games, there is little to no story in the actual game, but to paraphrase what the story is you are one of the two Gunstar Twins, who have a sister called Gunstar Yellow & an older brother called Gunstar Green.

The gunstars defeated the god of ruin, Golden Silver long ago and have been sleeping for generations, they are awakened to find that Green has lost his memories and joined the Empire. The Empire is trying to resurrect the God of Ruin and the Gunstars try and stop them.

Now back to the gameplay, there are four weapons and two weapon slots for the Gunstars. The four weapons include a close range fire attack, a chaser that is similar to a homing gun, a lighting gun as well as a machine gun. The player can hold any combination of each of the four weapons, creating a number of different variations.

For example the machine gun with the chaser will produce chaser machine gun rounds, or holding double of the same weapon will make it more powerful. It is a system that works well, even though the game is ridiculously short.

There are a handful of levels, but the game only lasts at about an hour and a half to beat it and that is it, and while leader boards & trophies help, there isn’t much reason to play again (given that 99% of the trophies can be attained through one play through).

Those seeking a challenge will prolly find the length of the game perfect as it will let them try the various difficulty levels to make the game harder & harder while climbing the leaderboards at the same time.

The presentation of the game is decent, the sprites hold up well especially with the smoother option added but the sound effects/music are nothing to call home about.

At the end of the day, Gunstar Heroes is short but the horrifically short length makes it a hard sale, even though the $4.99 price tag certaintly helps. Interested in easy Trophies/Achievements or a cheap game to play with a friend Gunstar will be a good choice, other than that it is hard to recommend.